The Detention Center
Hidalgo County Adult Detention Facility
- Operated byHidalgo County Sheriff's Office
- County publishes a jail nameYes — the Inmate Visitation page names "the Hidalgo County Adult Detention Facility"; the Magistrate Court page names "the Hidalgo County Detention Center"
- Address701 E. El Cibolo Road, Edinburg, TX 78542 (Detention Center, per the Magistrate Court page)
- Housing units namedAlpha, Bravo, Charlie, Echo, Gulf Section, Hotel 2 and Infirmary appear in the published weekly visitation schedule
- Communications providerNCIC Inmate Communications (phones, video visits, messaging); Access Corrections for the inmate trust account
- MagistrationMagistrate Court hearings are broadcast in the lobby of the Detention Center and on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@HidalgoCountyMagistrateCourt
- What was triedhttps://www.hidalgocounty.us/3007/Detention ; https://www.hidalgocounty.us/2208/Inmate-Visitation ; https://www.hidalgocounty.us/2192/Sheriffs-Page ; https://www.hidalgocounty.us/3241/Hidalgo-County-Magistrate-Court ; https://www.hidalgocounty.us/177/Bail-Bond-Board
- Beds and population, 2026-081,128 people held in 1,432 rated beds
Source: Hidalgo County — Inmate Visitation · checked 2026-08-22
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✗How to post bond — not published
- ✓Phone, video and commissary rates
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds1,432 rated capacity — TCJS population report, 1 August 2026; the county publishes no bed count
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff J.E. "Eddie" Guerra
- Published as"Sheriff J.E. ‘Eddie’ Guerra"
- Address711 El Cibolo Rd., Edinburg, TX 78541
- Phone(956) 383-8114; fax (956) 393-6179
- Office hoursMonday–Friday, 8 a.m.–5 p.m.
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Hidalgo County — Sheriff · checked 2026-08-22
The Judges
The county publishes no judge's name on its 464th District Court page (https://www.hidalgocounty.us/2418/464th-District-Court); that bench is therefore not listed. Hidalgo County also runs a dedicated Magistrate Court whose dockets are posted daily and whose hearings are streamed, plus Master Courts 1 and 2, a Child Protection Court and two Probate Courts. There is no County Court at Law No. 3.
County Judge
- Richard F. Cortez
County Courts at Law
- Rodolfo Gonzalez (County Court at Law No. 1)
- Jaime Palacios (No. 2)
- Fred Garza (No. 4)
- Arnoldo Cantu (No. 5)
- Albert Garcia (No. 6)
- Sergio Valdez (No. 7)
- Omar Maldonado (No. 8)
- Patricia O'Caña-Olivarez (No. 9)
- Armando J. Marroquin (No. 10)
District Courts
- Luis M. Singleterry (92nd)
- Fernando Mancias (93rd)
- J.R. "Bobby" Flores (139th)
- Rose Guerra Reyna (206th)
- Marla Cuellar (275th)
- Juan R. Alvarez (332nd)
- Noe Gonzalez (370th)
- Letty Lopez (389th)
- Keno Vasquez (398th)
- Orlando J. Esquivel (430th)
- Renee R. Betancourt (449th)
- Nereida Lopez-Singleterry (476th)
Justices of the Peace
- Gilberto Saenz (Pct. 1, Place 1, Weslaco)
- Andrew Gonzalez (Pct. 1, Place 2, Weslaco)
- Ricardo Perez (Pct. 2, Place 1, Pharr)
- Jaime Jerry Munoz (Pct. 2, Place 2, Pharr)
- Ramon Segovia (Pct. 3, Place 1, Mission)
- Juan Jose Peña, Jr. (Pct. 3, Place 2, Mission)
- Charlie Espinoza (Pct. 4, Place 1, Edinburg)
- Andre Maldonado (Pct. 4, Place 2, Edinburg)
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-22
The County Commissioners
They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
- What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
- The boardBoard of County Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The only county in this group that publishes actual telephone and video-visit prices. The bilingual NCIC "Prepaid Communication Services" sheet linked from the Detention page gives per-minute calling rates with no connection fee: local $0.14, in-state $0.14, out-of-state $0.14, international $0.35, Cuba $0.75; video visits $0.30 per minute; messages $0.25 each; picture messages $0.35 each.
- 'roster' is no: the "Case & Jail Records Search" quick link goes to the district clerk's Odyssey portal at http://pa.co.hidalgo.tx.us/default.aspx, a case-records search rather than a published in-custody list.
- Budget check: the 2026 Adopted Budget Book, the 2026 Proposed Budget Book and a GFOA version are published under the 2026 Budget Process page, with budget bulletins, workshop presentations and the statutory newspaper notices; the 2027 process page is already live. The adopted budget PDF is a scanned image, so the detention line items could not be machine-verified.
- The Bail Bond Board page covers licensing of bonding companies, not how a family posts a bond, so 'bond_info' is no.
- Hidalgo County is not on the TCJS non-compliant jails list as of August 2026.
- Four commissioners plus the County Judge, who presides. Precinct 1 David L. Fuentes, Precinct 2 Eduardo "Eddie" Cantu, Precinct 3 Everardo Villarreal, Precinct 4 Ellie Torres; County Judge Richard F. Cortez.
- County seat: Texas State Library and Archives Commission — Counties and County Seats
The record
17 people have died in the Hidalgo County jail since 2016.
Deaths: Texas Justice Initiative, the cleaned copy of the Texas Attorney General’s custodial death reports — the state’s own public index carries no cause of death and has not been refreshed since August 2025. Population: Texas Commission on Jail Standards monthly report. Counted, not estimated.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Hidalgo County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.
Names verified 2026-08-22 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered